Half a decade after its founding, Lamprophonic has presented over 230 writers. These writers constitute a wide swath of this city's creative community: They are of ranging ages, races, ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, and professions. They are — I believe — from all five boroughs and New Jersey. Some have pursued their MFAs, some have not. Sometimes Lamprophonic is the first opportunity a writer has to have their words heard by an audience. Sometimes our authors have national followings. To bring this diverse set together has been our aim.

Behind the scenes, ten artists have taken on the responsibility of curating events at one point or another, and together we have sought to make this community a little more inviting to all. There is still a lot of work to be done in this regard, but I'm immensely proud of what we've accomplished.

Five years in, this is not the end of Lamprophonic, but it is a reframing. We will no longer produce monthly events, but will attempt to marshal our resources more acutely — designing fewer, equally innovative events as it suits our priorities.

I feel both extremely confident in the choice I am making as the director of the organization — it's time — and deeply ambivalent as a citizen of this country who believes in free speech, equality, and the dignity of words. Words still mean something, but they mean something less than they did a year ago. Trust, I'll still be fighting for the space to be heard, if in a different way. I know that the reins of this work are ingoodhands.

I want thank you all for being a part of this effort. You didn't have to read at or attend our events, but you did, in greater numbers each year, and it energized our every move. On a personal level, I want to thank you for giving me a chance to host and direct our events; these are not things I ever saw myself doing, but I'm grateful that I did. Thank you for giving me the time of day.

As we wrap up and regroup, you may hear from us less, but do stay in touch. We want to keep promoting and presenting and celebrating, so please let us know of your good news and keep us liked or followed or whatever the kids are doing these days.

And speaking of celebration, I hope you'll join us at our Take A Bow reading on Friday, July 28th. At this event, the 2016-2017 Lampro curators will take to the mic to share a little bit of what they've been working on. Please come cheer them on.

In sum I'll say these final things:

I hope the community we created has been as welcoming as we envisioned. I hope together we'll continue to expand those margins until everyone feels they have a space to be heard. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being a part of this. Don't be a stranger.

For years, the Lampro team has worked tirelessly, on a fully volunteer basis, to provide regular, innovative literary programming that creates opportunities for new voices to be heard. It's been a real pleasure, but also more than a bit of work.

Taking a moment to recognize the efforts of the artists behind Lamprophonic is something for which we're long overdue. So, finally, on July 28th we'll be headed back to Bar Thalia for our Take A Bow reading, featuring the curators of 2016 and 2017's stellar Lamprophonic events.

Join us in celebrating the dedicated writers who work daily to engage our community, create opportunity, and, of course, entertain.

We'll see you at 8 pm on Friday, July 28th, to hear readings from:

Katie Longofono received her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where she directed the 2014 SLC Poetry Festival. She co-founded and curated Dead Rabbits Reading Series 2014-17, and co-produced AmpLit Fest in 2016 and 2017, in partnership with Lamprophonic and Summer on the Hudson. She is the author of three chapbooks: Angeltits (Sundress Publications 2016), Honey and Bandages (co-authored with Mary Stone; Folded Word Press 2015), and The Angel of Sex (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in The Boiler Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, BOAAT, glitterMOB, South Dakota Review, Juked, Slipstream, and more. You can find her on twitter @longofonz. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sarah Sala: Sarahis a native Michigander with an MFA in Poetry from New York University. Her awards and honors include: an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Marjorie Rapport Award for Poetry, An Avery Hopwood Award for Nonfiction, and a Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship. Recently, her poem "Hydrogen" was featured in the "Elements" episode of NPR's hit show Radio Lab in collaboration with Emotive Fruition. Her poems also appear in Poetry Ireland Review, Atlas Review, and Palimpsest. You can visit her at sarahsala.com.

Laura Esther Wolfson: Laura's distinctive blend of essay, first-person narrative and exploration of language, culture, books and place has appeared in Bellingham Review, Gettysburg Review, The Rumpus, The Sun, Zyzzyva and elsewhere. Her work has repeatedly garnered 'notable' listings in Best American Essays and been anthologized on both sides of the Atlantic, including in Swedish translation. Her essay "Losing the Nobel" is a finalist for the 2017 Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize, and her essay collection Proust at Rush Hour, winner of the Iowa Prize in Literary Nonfiction, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in spring 2018. Learn more at lauraestherwolfson.com.

Clare Smith Marash: Clareis a winner of the Avery Hopwood Award in Short Fiction and numerous fellowships. She has taught at the high school and university level, and now works in television and film. She has been published in All Hollow magazine, and online at The Week, Time, and The Oxford American. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University. You can learn more about her writing and work by perusing claresmithmarash.com.

We're back for the final Emerging Writers Series of the season! Join us for an excellent set of poetry and prose performances, $8 whiskies, and a toast to our best season yet!

On Friday you'll enjoy works from these fine emerging talents:

Sean Denmark is from Alabama originally, but moved to the city after living in Cameroon, where he was a Peace Corps volunteer, to teach and then earn an MFA from NYU. He writes fiction and poetry and works in education.

Lisa Ferber is a prolific multidisciplinary artist whose comedies of manners and fanciful paintings celebrate glamorous eccentrics and objects of indulgence. She is the creator, writer, and a star of the feature film The Sisters Plotz, which premiered at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives and received its Hollywood premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. Ms. Ferber’s film Whimsellica’s Grand Inheritance, which she wrote and starred in, won the audience vote in the It Came From Kuchar Festival, and she starred in the final film of underground icon Doris Wishman, Each Time I Kill, featuring cameos by filmmaker John Waters and B-52s frontman Fred Schneider. She has read her short stories at KGB, Sunday Salon, and Barbes, and is published in the Have a NYC collection of shorts. Her paintings have shown at the National Arts Club, the Painting Center, Local Project, and other venues.

Nicole Goodwin is the 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow as well as the 2013-2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow, and the winner of The Fresh Fruit Festival’s 2013 Award for Performance Poetry. She published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” (Personal essay/Review for award-winning documentary Tough Love) in the New York Times’ parentblog Motherlode. Additionally, her work '"Desert Flowers" was shortlisted and selected for performance by the Women's Playwriting International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Omotara James is a British-born American poet and essayist. The daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants, she currently resides in NYC. She is a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow: the Third Place Winner of the 2017 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry, the recipient of Slice Literary’s 2016 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets, as well as the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Crab Fat Magazine: QTPOC issue, Cosmonauts Avenue, Luna Luna Magazine and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from Cave Canem and the Home School. Online, you can find her: @omotarajames and omotarajames.com

Francisco Márquez is a Venezuelan poet in Brooklyn. His work can be found in The Offing, poets.org, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Home School, and Breadloaf Writer's Conference. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University.

Miranda K. Pennington is a writer, editor and adjunct with an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University. Her first book, a braided biography-literary criticism-memoir about the Brontë sisters and their novels, debuted on May 16, 2017 from Seal Press (an imprint of the Hachette Brook Group) Previous work has appeared on The Toast, Electric Literature, The American Scholar online, the Ploughshares Writing Lessons blog, and The Catapult podcast.

We return to our beloved Bar Thalia on next Friday, May 5th, for the penultimate Emerging Writers Series of the season! We're so pleased to have these fine literary talents joining us:

ERIK LEE is a fiction writer in the Creative Writing and Literary Translation MFA program at Queens College. He has a Creative Writing BA from the University of Arizona. He is proudly a disabled Korean-American.

ALEXANDER RADISON is an MFA candidate in poetry at Queens College, where he also teaches creative writing. His work has appeared in Utopia Parkway Lit, Newtown Literary, The Violet Hour, and at laborarts.org, where he won the "Making Work Visible" poetry prize.

KIRAN RAJAGOPALAN is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and educator with a keen interest in integrating eastern theories of aesthetics, philosophy, and performance with neuroscience, art therapy, and social activism. Trained extensively in Bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance) for over 25 years, Kiran has given many acclaimed performances in India, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, France, and the United States. Kiran studied Behavioral Neuroscience and Spanish at Boston University, graduating in 2008. He chose to follow his passion for dance, and he graduated from the University of Madras with an M.A. (honors) in Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance) in 2010 and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University in 2015. In 2017, he founded Daya Arts, a non-profit organization committed to the presentation, promotion, and preservation of South Asian art.

JULIA LYNN RUBIN is currently finishing an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults at The New School. Her debut novel, BURRO HILLS, comes out next year from Diversion Books. The following is an excerpt from a young adult novel that is currently on submission with editors.

VIKI A. SANZ is a Miami native living in Brooklyn. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry at New York University, and holds a degree in Creative Writing and American Sign Language from Columbia College Chicago. She teaches Pre-K.

JASMINE DREAME WAGNER is the author of On a Clear Day (Ahsahta Press). Her poems are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Fence, New South, and have been anthologized in The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral.

BONUS: In addition to an excellent selection of poetry and prose, we'll have $8 whiskies!

We're back again, this time on a Saturday! We're so pleased to present the following six emerging talents on Saturday, April 1st, at Bar Thalia:

Cat Batsios is from Flint, MI, and for the purposes of her poetry, thinks of her city as Atlantis. She's been published in a couple journals, and has done some writer workshop things, but mostly just writes to de-normalize the notion of simplifying and dehumanizing an entire population of people based on who they are and where they live [Read: Flint]. Her marketable skills include teaching poetry to minors, teaching poetry as subversion, and talking shit.

Adam Dalva is a graduate of NYU's MFA Program, where he was a Veterans Writing Workshop Fellow. He was an Associate Fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. He teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers, and his work has been published by The Millions, Tin House, Guernica, The Guardian, and others. He is also a dealer of French 18th Century antiques. You can find his writing at adamdalva.com.

Chanice Hughes-Greenberg is a poet, Capricorn, & chic cat lady living in Bed-Stuy. She graduated from Pratt Institute in 2010 with a BFA in Writing & hails from upstate New York by way of Long Island. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Caketrain, Correspondence, Art Observed, Packet Biweekly, Horse Less Review & Big Lucks. She is the Membership & Direct Mail Coordinator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, & drinks rosé year round. You can find her at: http://chanicehughesgreenberg.com.

Geeta Tewari was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She earned a BA from Cornell University, a law degree from Fordham Law School, and will receive an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University in May 2017. She has been published in Narrative Magazine, The Boston Globe, Mom Egg Review, and Ibbetson Street Magazine, and has received Honorable Mentions for her stories from Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, and Glimmer Train. In 2013, she studied poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and in 2016 she received a fiction merit scholarship to attend the NY State Summer Writer’s Institute. She teaches a creative writing course at Columbia University titled “Sensuality in Scene." More information can be found at www.geetatewari.com.

Daniel Tompkins was raised in Virginia and languished in the Army for several years before completing a degree in creative writing at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn with his dog, Chewie, who is very cross-eyed.

Helen Zuman’s memoir, MATING IN CAPTIVITY (in which a Harvard grad joins a cult, learns its mating rituals, endures exile, and, finally, mates in the wild) will be available in paperback in May 2018, via She Writes Press – provided her Kickstarter succeeds! Want to influence the rising action? Go here! Or, for thoughts on purpose, meaning, gift, coercion, social nourishment, and the catastrophe of industrial civilization, visit her blog at helenzuman.com.

We're back for the second half of season five with six excellent emerging talents. Please join us Friday, February 24th, at Bar Thalia to hear new work from these fine writers:

LaQuann Dawson is a 22 year old creative who wants nothing more than to express the fuck out of himself--however possible. An Ohio native, he studies Journalism and Africana Studies at NYU. LaQuann is trying to tell his life story as he lives it through feelings, words, images and looks. If you are feeling anything that he's feeling please let him know and you can feel it together. A photographer as well you can keep up with him on instagram @laquanndawson and his blog Lackwhen (lackwhen.com).

Linda Harris Dolan is a poet and editor. She holds an M.A. in English & American Literature from NYU, and an M.F.A in Poetry from NYU, where she was a Starworks Creative Writing Fellow. She’s former Poetry Editor of Washington Square Review and has taught at The King’s College and NYU. She's a 2016 Best of the Net and 2017 Pushcart nominee. Her work combines poetry with interview and received speech to portray histories of medicine and the sick body amongst daily life.

Derick Dupre is the author of the chapbook Frail Shrines. His work has appeared in publications including Hobart, Fanzine, Sleepingfish, and Spork.

Mickie Meinhardt is a Creative Writing Fellow and MFA candidate in Fiction at The New School, where she hosts a reading host and tries to get writers to be less antisocial. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wax, NYLON, The Seventh Wave, The Rumpus, Handwritten, General Assembly, and others. She is working on her first novel, and lives, writes, bakes, and drinks a lot of wine in Brooklyn, New York.

Edwin Rivera was raised in Bayonne, New Jersey (where the water from the faucet tastes as if squeezed out of used toilet paper), early home of one of the largest oil refinery centers in the world, city of strange smells and weird walking wonders. He worked in a chemical and oil facility for three years as a laborer and dockman (same location as that storied refinery that had belonged to Standard Oil). He acquired an MFA from the New School in 2012 and has been teaching at the School of Visual Arts ever since. He has received fiction fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center and Willapa Bay AiR. He has a poem forthcoming in March in Juked Magazine.

We've got an awesome line-up for the final Emerging Writers Series of 2016! Please join us Friday at Bar Thalia (95th & Bway) for the literary stylings of:

MARIE CHRISTELLE GARCIA lives in New York City but grew up in Manila. Because of this, she constantly feels like she's living in two time zones and wishes teleporting were a real. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2013. She worked as part of the editorial staff at Sarah Lawrence's Lumina, as well as The Boiler Journal, an online magazine founded by her friends. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications like Travel Dose, Travel Now, and Life Hack. She is currently working on a collection of short stories about moving to a different country, displacement, and the concept of home.

ROBERTO CARLOS GARCIA’s amores gitano (gypsy loves) was published by Červená Barva Press in 2013. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Engagement, Public Pool, Stillwater Review, Gawker, Barrelhouse, Tuesday; An Art Project, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, Bold As Love Magazine, Entropy, PLUCK!: The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, The Rumpus, 5 AM Magazine, Wilderness House, Connotation Press- An Online Artifact, Poets/Artists, Levure Litteraire, and others. He is the founder of Get Fresh Books, LLC, a cooperative press. His first full collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation, and is an Instructor of English at Union County College. His website is http://www.robertocarlosgarcia.com/

KAREN HEULER’s stories have appeared in over 90 literary and speculative magazines and anthologies, from Alaska Quarterly Review to Tin House to Weird Tales. She has published four novels and three story collections with university and small presses, and her previous collection was chosen for Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2013 list. She has received an O. Henry award, been a finalist for the Iowa short fiction award, the Bellwether award and the Shirley Jackson award for short fiction. Aqueduct Press has just published her latest collection, "Other Places."

ANANDA LIMA holds an MA in Linguistics from UCLA. She was a mentee in the AWP Writer to Writer Program and has attended workshops at Sewanee and Tin House, as well as Bread Loaf. She has taught at UCLA and The Montclair State University. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review. Ananda is currently working on a collection of poems on identity in motherhood and immigration, and a novel set in Brasilia, where she grew up as the daughter of migrants from Northeast Brazil. Find her at anandalima.com.

PONCHO MARTINEZ is an adult man who lives in Queens. His greatest weaknesses are his fear of water and his left shoulder.

MATTHEW L. THOMPSON is a stream of color and breathing, still, contradiction from Cleveland, Ohio, and a MFA candidate in Poetry at The New School. He wants his writing to fight, cry, moan, grieve, listen, shout and be as varied and full as he is in the flesh. Matthew wants the reader to feel hugged and possibly humped. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and is getting his life. Join him on Twitter and Instagram @mlew_33 & his blog Unlearning Monday.

We are utterly thrilled to present these fantastic emerging talents at our next Emerging Writers Series event. Join us Friday, Oct. 28th, for fantastic poetry and prose, $8 whiskies, and general merriment!

Miriam Alexander-Kumaradoss grew up between three states in South India, and now lives in New York. She's completing an MFA in Fiction at Columbia University, and spends her time writing about odd people and creatures that may or may not exist. She has been published in The Molotov Cocktail and has work forthcoming in Apogee Journal.

Laura Buccieri lives in NYC, where she is an MFA candidate in Poetry at The New School. You can find her forthcoming and most recent work in Prelude, Potluck, Word Riot, The Seventh Wave, Reality Beach, Nourrir, Yes Poetry, Public Pool, Entropy, and FORTH. She works at Freeman’s Journal and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.

Jared Daniel Fagen is a writer living in Brooklyn. His prose has appeared in The Collagist, PLINTH, The Brooklyn Rail, Sleepingfish, Minor Literature[s], and elsewhere. His nonfiction has been published in The Quarterly Conversation and 3:AM Magazine. He is founding editor of Black Sun Lit and studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).

Javan Howard is a poet and writer from the Bronx, NY. He truly believes that the lived experience is the ultimate teaching tool and uses poetry as a social forum to foster discourse about love, culture, and identity. He has facilitated workshops with The New York State Office of Children and Family Services, Voices UnBroken, The GO Projectand Wingspan Arts. He currently is a Teaching Artist for Community-Word Project and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Howard participates in open mic events under the moniker "RighteosTPoet." His work has been featured online at Black Heart Magazine and Brooklyn Stories Vol. 13. See some of Javan's lesson plans at Teachers & Writers Magazine, check out his Website or follow him below to stay connected: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn

Stephanie Jimenez is a Queens-based writer and former Fulbright recipient who has worked in publishing at Penguin/Riverhead Books, and is currently a writer at Planned Parenthood. She is Chair of the AAP-affiliated Young to Publishing Writers Committee and cofounder of the editorial group the Jasper Collective. Her work has appeared in Xenith Magazine, Label Me Latino/a, and Latina Voices. This November, she will attend Banff's Centre for Art's Emerging Writers Intensive with a merit scholarship.

[A panel discussion held at the 2016 AmpLit Fest, a co-production of Lamprophonic and Summer on the Hudson]

Here’s the second of our two panels, which we’re also thrilled to share in full with our digital community! Click the link to hear four wonderful writers and editors discuss their efforts to expand and diversify the literary marketplace. Featuring Jennifer Baker, Zareen Jaffery, William Johnson, and Leigh Stein. Moderated by Clare Smith Marash

MIND THE GAP: DIVERSIFYING THE FIELD

While the range of authors published each year may be growing (slowly), many of the books that gain attention — those that are reviewed and taught — are written by white, heterosexual, cis-gender men. Behind the scenes, the industry is made up predominantly of white, heterosexual, cis-gender women and men. How does the world of books remain so unrepresentative of the one outside them? How do we change that? In this panel, we’re talking to the individuals who grapple with this lack of diversity in the literary field on a daily basis, exposing disenfranchisement and creating a space to correct the injustice. What are their to-do-lists, their five-year plans? What strategies have they mapped out? Learn from the writers and editors across the industry working to combat prejudice, to explore the actions we can all take, and to discuss how to balance creating a space and building community.

Here’s the 1st of the two panels we hosted at AmpLit Fest, which we’re thrilled to share in full with our digital community. Click the link to hear more about YA Grows Up: A Genre For All featuring Linda Camacho, Ashley Woodfolk, and Gavriel Savit. Moderated by Caty Gordon.

YA GROWS UP: A GENRE FOR ALL

The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter…These wildly successful stories all began as ‘Young Adult’ (YA) books. Now, not only are their adaptations blockbuster hits, but the books themselves have been read worldwide by readers of all ages and ilks. In a world where Young Adult stories dominate bestseller lists and movie marquees, what is the point of this delineation? What is the genre’s function in the literary landscape? A scintillating discussion about what the genre means to those working within it, and to our reading culture at large.

We’re so thrilled to present these emerging talents at our upcoming Emerging Writers Series reading! It’s the last one of the season. Please join us!

Rachel Allen is the assistant managing editor at Guernica. Her work has appeared in Full Stop, The Fanzine, Nerve, Guernica, and Mask. She lives in Brooklyn.

Kate Doyle is MFA candidate in fiction at NYU. Her work has been featured in No Tokens Journal, Meridian, Franklin Electric Reading Series, and NYU Emerging Writers Reading Series.

Hillary Ferguson is a New York City-based poet and writer. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry and fiction at The New School and a staff writer for recruiter.com. Her work has appeared in the Roanoke Review, Politics and Poems, and elsewhere. She can be found @Hillary_Ferg.

Umair Kazi grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In previous incarnations, he was a law student and a ship-chandler’s water-clerk (like Conrad’s hero, without the heroism). He is currently completing his MFA in Fiction at Columbia University. His translations of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz are forthcoming in Circumference: Poetry in Translation and Pleiades. You can find him on Twitter @NightColander.

Uzodinma Okehi spent 2 years handing out zines on the subway. Wasn’t as fun as he thought. His work has appeared in Pank, Hobart, Bartleby Snopes, and many, many other places, no doubt, you’ve never heard of. He has an MFA in writing from New York University. He lives in Brooklyn. His son is 8 yrs old, smiles a lot, (too much?), and will absolutely, cross you over and drain a jumper in your face.

Julia Phillips’s fiction has appeared in The Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Toast, and The Rumpus, and is forthcoming in Confrontation. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and Fulbright fellow in creative writing.